Moving On...Growing Up

Here's a montage of things from the past few months to fast-forward you with us to the present.

We had a fantastic Christmas vacation with much of our extended family. Here's a picture from the very end. Grandma and Grandpa managed to hide their goodbye tears, but Ellie was more transparent about not wanting to leave.

A couple of weeks after returning to England, it was time to pack up for the big move from Durham down to Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. We used a local removal company, which came with lots of northern color. Here are the guys celebrating getting everything into the truck! (Well, nearly everything — we had to leave behind a little bbq and four patio chairs).

Ellie has been enjoying the creative arts for a long time, every since she surprised us with starting to draw cats last Christmas. Here's a Stickle Brick creation. She maintains it's a church, but I seem to recall her calling it a house at the time (note the door and windows).

Crystal has a bit of a reputation for allowing (encouraging?) messy play that would leave lesser mothers trembling in fear. I think by anyone's account this finger-painting session got a little out of hand.

And it didn't stop there.... Ellie wasn't satisfied with anything short of full body painting!

And now, for the past few weeks, Ellie has been attending the local pre-school. We hadn't really planned on this, but it seemed after grand social times with family and friends over Christmas that we weren't able to quite keep her stimulated as much as she liked at home. So we enrolled for a few weeks as a trial to see how it would go. Here she is playing with her "squirrel" group.